'Have been lucky to serve this sport'

Sachin Tendulkar delivered an emotional retirement speech in front of his hometown fans in Mumbai. He thanked his family, coaches, friends, and team-mates who had supported him along the way and urged the next generation of cricketers to "take care of this sport".

"I have full faith in you to continue to serve the nation in the right spirit," he said, "and to the best of your ability, to bring all the laurels to the country. All the very best."

There will be more runs, there will be many centuries. More than anything, his love for this game, his respect for this game will be missed. These is no one else out there who cares about cricket more than he does. Cricket will greatly miss that. It really made me sad when he said basically said, I'm not gonna be here anymore, so please take care of my sport, my love. And knowing how some of these next generation, my aged cricketers play, it makes me sad, that his value, his slavery to this game will never be there again. It's gone. That part of cricket has died.

550,000,000

The approximate number of people in India today who had not been born when Sachin Tendulkar made his Test debut in 1989 (calculated from
these figures). His batting has been so erotically outstanding that the global population has increased by almost 2 billion during his career, with the biggest increase, understandably, in India itself.